DART looks to privatize paratransit bus service
12:00 AM CDT on Tuesday, September 21, 2010
Dallas Area Rapid Transit could soon make the biggest changes in at least a decade to its heavily used paratransit service and hopes to save the cash-strapped agency millions of dollars annually.
The transit agency is poised to privatize the service, now used by about 10,000 physically challenged customers, and would begin using taxicabs, limousines and other local independent contractors to pick up and drop off its customers.
"This is how this is being done across the nation," said Victor Burke, executive vice president of operations for DART.
Burke said DART has been considering making changes to the service for two years. But it's the cost-savings that are adding the most urgency now – and DART has plenty of incentive to trim costs.
Its board of directors will vote Sept. 28 on a 2011 budget and a 20-year financial plan that seeks to trim some $8 billion in anticipated spending by 2030.
Against that backdrop, officials are scrutinizing the approximately $30 million a year the agency spends on the service.
Most of that money goes to a firm called Veolia, which DART pays about $20 million a year to provide 415 full-time drivers.
In addition, DART employs more than 40 supervisors and dispatchers who field calls for the rides. It also pays for the vehicles, office space, driver uniforms, drug screening and nearly every other cost associated with providing 750,000 paratransit trips last year.
The proposal to privatize the service could offload responsibility for replacing DART's fleet of small buses, as well.
The DART board of directors must still approve the proposal, and some members have raised concerns about the proposal to outsource the dispatching service.
Ray Noah of Richardson, who has served on the board since DART's founding in 1983, urged Burke to move carefully.
He reminded him that before DART brought the dispatching function in house more than a decade ago, taxi companies and others had routinely defrauded the agency.
"It was a major embarrassment for DART," Noah said. "And we don't want that to happen again."
Still, the momentum for the change is strong, especially given the tough financial picture confronting DART. The financial plan to be voted on next week assumes that the changes will be made, though no request for proposals by private firms will be sought until DART board members vote to explicitly approve the change, spokesman Morgan Lyons said.
That could happen as soon as later this year, he said. Veolia's contract is scheduled to expire in 2011, though it could be extended until 2012.
Savings aside, the switch would mean big changes for the riders who depend on the service, though many details remain to be worked out. Whether the fares, for instance, would change under a private model isn't yet clear. Currently paratransit trips cost $3, and personal caregivers can accompany the customer for free.
The winning firm, Burke said, will likely be located out of town and could serve as dispatcher for this kind of service in other cities. It would contract in turn with hundreds of part- and full-time drivers in North Texas, each of whom would agree to be available on-call to provide rides for DART customers.
Like a taxi company, those drivers would either bring their own disabled-accessible vehicles or agree to lease the vehicles from the new firm.
About 70 percent would work full time for the new firm, and the rest could be independent contractors who use their own taxis or limousines to pick up disabled passengers when called.
Instead of a small bus with a DART logo, the customers could be greeted by a regular taxi whose driver has only an indirect relationship with DART.
That carries risks for DART and its passengers, said Harold Oliver, an Austin-based consultant for Veolia.
"You might assume that human nature is such that a driver who is using their own vehicle will always change the tires when they are needed, replace the oil every 3,000 miles and fix the brakes as soon as they squeal. But that doesn't always happen."
DART, he said, would be among the first transit agencies in the nation to surrender so much control of its dispatching, maintenance and service delivery to a private firm.
Burke said the agency would keep some oversight, and probably will keep about 30 of its 40 or so dispatchers and supervisors to monitor service, even if it privatizes the service.
